Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cash is as anonymous as it gets.
How do you pay with cash on the internet? You need some sort of card.
Gift cards purchased with cash.
Stripe: Bitcoin
91–100 of 374 posts
Re: Stripe: Bitcoin
#92The Bitcoin community might want to take a deep breath and recognize where Bitcoin has the most real-world use. The idea that my mom will someday use Bitcoin to buy books online is about as realistic as the belief that, any minute now, youngsters will realize that the daily newspaper is better read in paper form, because of the texture and experience and the anonymity of paper. For that matter, I am a computer progra…
The appeal of bitcoin to me, a regular American, is much the same appeal that using a VPN, having encrypted hard drives, and not sharing information about myself all over social media does. There is very little ability to have privacy when paying with USD. You can have cash transactions, in real life, or send money orders through the mail. That's pretty much it.
I want privacy in my spending and in my assets. If I like reading about hacking and buy an eBook about it, I don't want that to be evidence against me when law enforcement comes knocking and tries to trump up charges against (see HN post about this just today). If I buy a VPN service, I don't want to become a target for surveillance. There are tons of legitimate, legal reasons to want privacy in purchasing and assets.
Re: Stripe: Bitcoin
#93The Bitcoin community might want to take a deep breath and recognize where Bitcoin has the most real-world use. The idea that my mom will someday use Bitcoin to buy books online is about as realistic as the belief that, any minute now, youngsters will realize that the daily newspaper is better read in paper form, because of the texture and experience and the anonymity of paper. For that matter, I am a computer progra…
I disagree somwhat- We're slowly moving into a new economy where the distinction between buyers and sellers is blurring: Instead of everyone making their purchases from a few megacorp sellers, the future will be one where any person may have a small shop or sell a small product with a small unit price (maybe even your mom someday.)
In that type of environment, it is helpful to have a payment system that is more "seller-friendly" than what we have now, since the sellers no longer have economies of scale to offset sale-side costs. Cryptocurrencies hold the promise fill the role of these "seller-friendly" currencies, since they allow anyone to accept payments without intermediaries and by merely tacking some minimal logic to their software stack of choice... though I agree they still have a long way to go to achieving this.
Re: Stripe: Bitcoin
#94What a fantastic product page. After less that 30 seconds, I knew exactly what Stripe was doing with Bitcoin, how to use the new feature and integrate it. This is great news for Bitcoin. If all it takes is one extra line of code for online retailers to start accepting the currency, widespread adoption could sky rocket. That's always been Bitcoin's crutch, simple integration. Others like Coinbase and Bitpay have made…
Difficulty of integration is not the main thing holding back Bitcoin adoption.
The main thing holding Bitcoin from being adopted more broadly today is that many consumers who are aware of it don't think it will be adopted more broadly!
Even in the HN community (which has a high concentration of early adopters of new technology), there are a lot of folks who don't think it will be adopted more broadly, as evidenced by the comments on this thread.
Re: Stripe: Bitcoin
#95Re: Stripe: Bitcoin
#96[deleted]
Re: Stripe: Bitcoin
#97The Bitcoin community might want to take a deep breath and recognize where Bitcoin has the most real-world use. The idea that my mom will someday use Bitcoin to buy books online is about as realistic as the belief that, any minute now, youngsters will realize that the daily newspaper is better read in paper form, because of the texture and experience and the anonymity of paper. For that matter, I am a computer progra…
The appeal of bitcoin to me, a regular American, is much the same appeal that using a VPN, having encrypted hard drives, and not sharing information about myself all over social media does. There is very little ability to have privacy when paying with USD. You can have cash transactions, in real life, or send money orders through the mail. That's pretty much it. I want privacy in my spending and in my assets. If I li…
Publishing your entire transaction history for the entire world to see doesn't seem like the best way to have privacy, even if it is under a pseudonym. After all, purchasing history seems like one of the best tools to trace a pseudonym.
Re: Stripe: Bitcoin
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the crutch now is not that it's hard to acquire bitcoins (thanks to coinbase and friends) or pay with bitcoin (thanks to stripe and friends), no, the only crutch is why should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars directly? It can be useful for people who either don't have access to credit cards but have access to bitcoins, people who already have a lot of bitcoins and curious tec…
>no, the only crutch is why should I buy bitcoins with my dollars when I can just pay with my dollars directly? (By dollars directly, I assume you mean by credit card or paypal.) Credit cards and paypal come with the ability to do chargebacks which are useful if you don't fully trust whoever you're paying, but credit card companies and paypal are middlemen who must be trusted too. If I trust the company I'm giving mo…
I guess that's the rub. As a customer (not a merchant) I will always trust paypal or visa over the person I am paying. If something doesn't get delivered, I get my money back.
Also Stripe is now the middleman. I'm not giving BTC to a merchant, I'm giving it to stripe to give to the merchant. That's good also, because I trust stripe more than merchant XYZ.
Re: Stripe: Bitcoin
#99The Bitcoin community might want to take a deep breath and recognize where Bitcoin has the most real-world use. The idea that my mom will someday use Bitcoin to buy books online is about as realistic as the belief that, any minute now, youngsters will realize that the daily newspaper is better read in paper form, because of the texture and experience and the anonymity of paper. For that matter, I am a computer progra…
> The idea that my mom will someday use Bitcoin to buy books online is about as realistic as the belief that, any minute now, youngsters will realize that the daily newspaper is better read in paper form
Your mom probably didn't push for the adoption of email yet here it is (sorry usps). The advantages of faster cheaper easier don't require much convincing, especially in the case of money/contracts/assets.
The idea that people will adopt antiquated technologies when better alternatives exist is paradoxical, which makes your analogy especially confusing. Government currency is the antiquated technology, not bitcoin.
For those remittance services you point to, they need market depth in order to operate. Sure the underground market can provide some, but merchant adoption sure isn't going to hurt.
Re: Stripe: Bitcoin
#100The Bitcoin community might want to take a deep breath and recognize where Bitcoin has the most real-world use. The idea that my mom will someday use Bitcoin to buy books online is about as realistic as the belief that, any minute now, youngsters will realize that the daily newspaper is better read in paper form, because of the texture and experience and the anonymity of paper. For that matter, I am a computer progra…
The world's simplest reasons why you might pay something using bitcoins is simply when this is the only way, or cheapest way, or safest way to make a transaction.
Example #1: some merchants are hit really hard with fraud, such as intangible goods paid by international credit card transactions. So hard that they decided to stop selling internationally. These merchants discover that Bitcoin re-enables them to sell internationally because Bitcoin completely solves the fraud problem for them (since transactions are irreversible). In that case, as an international customer of such a merchant, paying in Bitcoin is your only option.
Example #2: some merchants offer discounts when paying in Bitcoin (because they don't incur credit card fees). So it is in your interest to pay in Bitcoin: you don't have to pay the fees from exchanging coins for fiat, and you don't have to pay the indirect credit card fees that the merchant would make you cover (via the absence of a discount).
Example #3: as Bicoin's adoption grows, more and more people end up having bitcoins in their hands, like your nephew giving you $50 worth of coins for Christmas. What's the easiest for you to use them? Setting up an account at an exchange (and incurring the associated hassles and fees when selling), or just spending them directly? Of course in this case you would want to spend them directly.
Example #4: say you are travelling out of town and paying for a meal in a restaurant that you suspect might be skimming credit cards... do you pay using a credit card or bitcoins? Using Bitcoin here would be much safer. It has all the advantages of credit cards (and more) without the inconvenience and danger of handling cash (losing it, getting robbed, no ability to "back up" cash, etc). Hardware bitcoin wallets have especially an insane opportunity to innovate in this space (wrt. security and ease of use).